The Epistle for Palm Sunday

Philippians 2.5-11 (NRSV)

⁵Let the same mind be in you that was^* in Christ Jesus,
⁶who, though he was in the form of God,
   did not regard equality with God
   as something to be exploited,
⁷but emptied himself,
   taking the form of a slave,
   being born in human likeness.
And being found in human form,
⁸   he humbled himself
   and became obedient to the point of death—
   even death on a cross.

⁹Therefore God also highly exalted him
   and gave him the name
   that is above every name,
¹⁰so that at the name of Jesus
   every knee should bend,
   in heaven and on earth and under the earth,
¹¹and every tongue should confess
   that Jesus Christ is Lord,
   to the glory of God the Father.

Barclay reminds us that Paul’s theology was always meant to be practical and not just theoretical, philosophical ponderings. What one believes has a huge impact on the way one lives. Paul wanted to persuade the Philippians to live a life that reflected the life of Jesus, the Messiah and so, in this passage, reminds them of the example of Jesus.

He was humble, obedient to the point of death and lived in a selfless way. He did not desire to dominate others, in fact he was willing to ‘… set aside his majesty …’ and served all. He did not desire to get his own way, but only to live God’s way; he did not want to exalt himself at all but rather to lift others up.

Easy words to type – difficult words to live!

Imagine if the people in the Church were to live this way; selfless and serving each other. I reckon that Churches would begin to fill up again. But all too often, even in the Church, we see self-seeking and ambitious and, as Barclay so aptly puts it, “Selfishness, self-seeking and self-display destroy our likeness to Christ and our fellowship with each other.”

Jesus won the hearts of people, not by good argument, persuasive speaking or force, but by love – by ‘… showing them a love, a self-sacrifice, a self-renunciation, which cannot but move the heart.’ It is always selfless love that becomes irresistibly attractive.

This  illustration from the experience of the China and Inland Mission (CIM) makes this point. Sadly, I cannot recall the exact details or the reference, but the essence of it is that a young man felt drawn to a particular area in China while praying with a map in front of him. He persuaded the CIM authorities that this was what God had called him for, and after due preparation, he was sent out. He was welcomed by the people, but after a short while, was told by the chief that he was very welcome to remain with the people, but he was to cease preaching. So convinced was he of God’s call to be with these people that he remained until his death and never preached another word. On the death of the chief, his heir wrote to CIM and requested a replacement missionary because all the people were curious to find out more of what the missionary had been forbidden to preach about. When the replacement arrived, he began telling the people about Jesus, but was stopped by the people because they said: “You keep talking about the missionary who has died; we know about his life, tell us of the God he followed!”

And there was revival!

Barclay adds to this by a lovely blend of phrases:

“A man does not say ‘I cannot resist a might like that.’ He says, ‘Love so amazing so divine, demands my soul my life, my all.’ A man does not say, ‘I am battered into surrender.’ He says ‘I am lost on wonder, love and praise.’ … Worship is based not on fear, but on love.”

No one comes to Jesus in a really meaningful way until they come because of His love. Preaching hell fire and brimstone I believe is wrong, because it defaces the image of Christ. People will seldom come to Christ as a result of a debate or argument – so it is fruitless for people like George Carey to appear on popular television programmes trying to argue with those who have already decided that Christianity makes no sense to them; but people are attracted to Christ and come to faith, and lasting faith, when they are drawn to a life that is filled with divine, agape love. It works all the time.

And so, God gave Jesus another name …

Renaming someone when something dramatic has happened has always been part of biblical tradition: Abram became Abraham; Jacob became Israel. For Jesus, it became ‘Lord’ derived from the Greek ‘kurios’ which originally meant master and so a title demanding respect. It became the official title of the Roman emperors in its Latin form ‘dominus’ and it is the Greek form of Jahweh plus Adonai which in the Old Testament refers to God as Lord.

Jesus is the ‘King of kings and Lord of Lords’, nothing less than divine.

In this passage Paul reveals the mind of God in verse 11 – that ‘… every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord …’ Barclay suggests that these words form the first Christian Creed.

This is the essence of our faith. We cannot explain it; it has been the cause of countless debates and even arguments, but what matters is that people can say that ‘for me’, Jesus Christ is Lord. This should be all that is required. John Wesley in his famous sermon on the Catholic Spirit stated that as Jehu said to Jehosophat in the Old Testament: “Is thine heart right as mine is with our Lord? if it be so, give me thine hand …” so should we!

This ought to be the basis of Christian fellowship, that for ‘me’ Jesus is unique, and if our hearts are filled with love, then we are Christian. Barclay explains: ‘… Christianity consists less in the mind’s understanding that it does in the heart’s love.’

The day will come when all people will call Jesus Christ Lord because they will do so ‘… to the glory of God the Father …’ And by not doing so now, they miss out on what life really is all about.

Everything Jesus did, was not for his own glory, but the glory of the Father. Jesus draws people to himself so that they can come to God and find life. At the heart of the Gospel is the sacrificial service of others by Jesus, the Messiah who calls us to follow his example.

Indeed, human and divine meet in the Eucharist and I believe that, in a heavenly moment, God reaches out to us and touches us in the most intimate way as we share this sacrament together. I too believe that it includes a dimension of remembering – as our Lord Himself commanded – ‘Do this in remembrance of me …’ It does indeed recall the sacrifice of our Lord, but I struggle to think that it is repeated as time is something created and the ‘one off’ of the Cross is unique.

It is this most wonderful and intimate of sacraments that can be a source of the greatest blessing but also has been the source of some of the most horrendous travesties. People have been slaughtered at worst and made to feel excluded and worthless and everything in between because of it – and this is a great shame. In Paul’s day, some were excluded, which led to his strong words of rebuke to the Corinthian Christians.

To pick up the theme of the earlier part of this reflection; I am not concerned what people believe about this because what matters is that it inspires us to love others with Christ’s divine, sacrificial love (agape). I am of the view that, like the Incarnation, we will never be able to understand the mystery of the Eucharist and indeed I am delighted that this is so, because if we could, then much of its beauty and intimacy would be lost. ‘You know that you have passed from death to life because you love one another,’ the Apostle John writes. And this is the miracle, that the Sacrament inspires us to love the loveless and the lovely.

We fall short of Christ’s call when we exclude others, especially from the intimacy of fellowship with God and one another at Holy Communion. This is what it really means to be Catholic (and sadly where Roman Catholics fall short by excluding others from this sacrament and by the attitude that only they have the right way to God.)

And so we return to the ‘all’ of the Gospel. Jesus died for ‘all’ – so that ‘all’ might live. It is just a pity that so many in Europe reject our Lord and that so many Christians drive others away who might otherwise come, because of the barriers they place in the way.